Brian Q. Cannon . Reopening the Frontier: Homesteading in the Modern West . Lawrence : University Press of Kansas . 2009 . Pp. viii, 307. $39.95.
2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 116; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.116.2.484
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
ResumoScholars have long challenged Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 interpretation of the American West. Brian Q. Cannon's book illustrates why Turner's thesis nevertheless endures long after he declared the frontier closed. Accurate or not, Turner echoed a cherished American dream: the Jeffersonian vision of equality and self‐reliance in an agrarian nation of land‐owning farmers. The Homestead Act of 1862 embodied those ideals. Cannon builds upon his previous work on New Deal resettlement and situates homesteading within the context of and in response to “new” western history. In particular, he answers Patricia Nelson Limerick's 1987 call for examining continuity in western history, arguing that “the myths of the frontier and Jeffersonian yeomanry with their linkage of virtue, independence, and life on the land flourished after ‘free land’ was no longer available” (p. 4). However, homesteading also reveals discontinuity in the modern West. Throughout the post–World War II era, pioneer rhetoric and the strength of the yeoman myth overshadowed the risks of subsistence living in a market economy for both lawmakers and western farmers. Furthermore, public attitudes and federal policies toward the environment and land use had all changed.
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